


Just Take Me Under Your Wings

by still_water



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Humor, M/M, Romantic Comedy, angel!Harry, uni!Louis, where harry is a sassy heavenly body
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:45:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_water/pseuds/still_water
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a near-death experience, drama student Louis meets his guardian angel, who is, in Louis' words, "not very angel-like".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Take Me Under Your Wings

**Author's Note:**

> So basically, I made uni!Louis and angel!Harry together in a fic, because it was imperative. Title is taken from Chris Brown's Fallen Angel.

Louis stops by his favourite coffee shop because if there’s one thing he believes in, and he doesn’t believe in a lot of things, it’s that you don’t walk into Cowell’s rehearsal 30 minutes late without ingesting at least a cup of expensive highfat mocha latte on the way, because he knows there will be a retribution in the form of a very angry 180lbs Simon Cowell belittling every ounce of his humanity, and even though Louis doesn’t particularly enjoy being screamed at, he’s morally inclined to be at least awake for it. He owes Cowell that much.  
  
He comes in at 9:43, when sure enough, Simon Cowell, body stiff as stone, turns around from being stood in front of the stage and doesn’t miss Louis’ entrance as the doors slam behind him. Standing nervously behind Cowell is Perrie, one of the assistant stage managers, who shoots Louis a warning look that appears to be more worried than disappointed. It’s a weird face, and Louis knows it would look ugly on anyone who isn’t Perrie. Knowing Louis for two years, Perrie has perfected that look. He simply sends a confident wink her way, making sure Cowell catches it in the process.  
  
Louis makes his way through the hall without trepidation, shamelessly basking in the thin slivers of sunlight breaking through the tainted windows and strolling by a couple of understudies and runners milling about, who don’t even have the courtesy to hide their snort when Louis enters their peripheral. Yep, he’s in trouble, all right. Not the kind of trouble he’s unfamiliar with, however.  
His buoyant amble doesn’t dither until he comes face to face with Cowell himself. He clears his throat. “My alarm clock broke.” He announces without preamble.  
  
Cowell looks at him blankly. “You’re 45 minutes late.”  
  
Louis fakes an insulted face. “43 minutes, thank you very much.”  
  
Cowell looks like he’s trying to strangle Louis with his mind. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t look for a replacement, Tomlinson.”  
  
Right now, Louis can think of only one. “Uh, I’m a good actor?”  
  
“What good is an actor if he can’t respect his job enough to actually come on time once in a while?” Cowell says through gritted teeth. “May I remind you, contrary to your belief, your talent is not indispensable.” Cowell declares with a resolute face but it’s the faint waver in his voice that gives him away. The tragic truth is Louis’ talent  _is_ indispensable; Louis knows this, Cowell knows this, anyone who’s ever seen Louis in tights knows this. Louis is the best actor in whole of Leeds, inside  _and_ outside the academy; maybe it has less to do with his raw talent and more to do with the fact that he’s never loved anyone or anything as much he’s loved dressing up in a unitard (acting, actually). He isn’t really worried about getting replaced, to say the least. “Have you got actually anything to say for yourself, Tomlinson, or are you just going to stand there and waste more of my time”  
  
Louis sighs. In the end, it turns out he may not be awake enough for this after all, so he tries to come up with a safe response. “I might have had difficulty following rules recently.”  
  
“Difficulty? No, you have had difficulty dealing with the lighting director; you have had difficulty kissing up to me, the goddamn director of this fucking show, but following rules? Difficult isn’t the word; try impossible.”  
  
Louis barely flinches. He’s heard it all before. He’s incorrigible, he’s difficult to work with, he’s stubborn, blah blah blah, this is 10 o’clock for him. Sooner than later, Louis will respond with a childish remark, Cowell will heave that ‘Louis Tomlinson is a hopeless case’ sigh of his that Louis loves with a dangerous passion, and everything will return to normal. It’s a repetition not worth cultivating, but what can you do when  
Louis is surrounded by people like Simon Holier-Than-Thou Cowell.  
  
“In my defense, it did seem like the lighting director was purposefully trying to blind me with that abomination he calls a ‘lighting technique’”, he says unabashedly, making air quotes that don’t impress Cowell any bit, “and I don’t kiss up to you because I can think of better uses for my mouth, no offense.”  
  
Cowell looks like he’s one provocation away from actually bursting into flames, but when Louis mumbles a serious “look, I’m sorry, Professor Cowell, really I am, I’ll get my alarm clock fixed ASAP” immediately after, he deflates like a balloon. He always does. Louis mentally laughs at it all.  
  
“If your arse isn’t on that stage ready to read in 5 minutes, I’ll call Professor Higgins myself and ask him to find me a replacement, one that doesn’t make me want to commit murder, am I making myself clear?”  
  
Louis gives him a comically wide, toothless grin. “Such a sweet-talker you are, Professor Cowell.”  
  
Well, just another day in paradise.    
-  
  
  
  
Except it isn’t. They form a semi-circle in the middle of the stage for a belated lineread, in favour of last minute changes in the script, and if Louis didn’t love the playwright so much, who happens to be one of his best friends, aka Zayn I-Look-Like-I’m-Brooding-But-I’m-Actually-Just-Thinking-What-To-Have-For-Dinner Malik, he would kill him. Louis is smashing his lines, as per usual, even earning a poorly suppressed mouth twitch from Cowell which is a good sign as any, and venerating gazes from the rest of the cast who actually admire his talent when they’re not too busy plotting his death, and is silently highfiving himself when suddenly a loud scream breaks out across the hall.  
  
There’s a split second that Louis catches the flash of panic in the faces of the people seated in front of him, Leigh Anne and Josh, before an invisible force whisks him out of his chair and sends him flying halfway across the stage while a large piece of metal equipment free-falls from the air and plunges into the stage with a morbid crash, smashing Louis’ chair in barely recognizable pieces. The noise is deafening enough to stun everyone in the room.  
  
Louis vaguely hears gasps of both shock and relief fill the room as two or three people gather around him in his horizontal and half-conscious state. When the panic washes away, he scrambles to his feet and walks limply over to inspect the large metal box that now sits on top of the remnants of his chair. The first thought that occurs to him is ‘fucking props look so real these days’ because he’s Louis.  
  
The second thought is somewhat scarier: that he could’ve been dead and one of these people could be calling his mum right now to give her the news that her son died during a stupid overdue lineread. Thankfully he’s 90% pretty sure that he is, in fact, alive, if the annoying pain in his back is any indication.  
  
He looks around the room, catching half-open mouths and ashen faces, and chuckles nervously. “Oops.”  
  
“Are you alright?” Someone – Perrie, probably – asks.  
  
Louis straightens the creases in his shirt. “I’ll live. All thanks to my knight in shining armor.” He says, hoping his saviour, whoever he was, would come out and say something like ‘it’s nothing, man, you could’ve died’ so Louis won’t have to ask. It could have been anyone: it could’ve been George, or Matt, although Louis questions the bicep strength of either, or hell, it could’ve been Cowell for all he knows, although again, Louis suspects Cowell would’ve probably gotten out his popcorn and watched the deadly thing drop on Louis with glee, so no.       
  
The room remains quiet, though, and Louis is intrigued. Humility isn’t exactly the common characteristic shared by these people. Four years of working and competing against them has taught him that. He continues to wait for someone to step out of the shadow and claim the heroic title but no one does.  
  
“Erm,” he scans his surrounding, all looking back at him with equally intrigued faces. “So I guess I saved myself from my own demise then. Hooray me. Boo all of you.” He throws them all a disappointed frown, and hopes it’s enough to hide the terror slowly creeping through him.  
“This could be a good headline for the papers: ‘Louis Tomlinson rescues himself from what would’ve been a gruesome death as his so-called friends just stand back and watch.’”  
  
Everyone is looking at him like they’re suddenly wishing that another equipment would drop from the heavens and wouldn’t miss this time. Except Perrie, maybe.  
  
“Kill yourself, Tomlinson.” Louis hears Ed, the ever underwhelming yet lovely Ed, mutter under his breath and Louis barks out one of his demonic laughs.  
  
After they’re done stowing away the carcasses and the floor is wiped clean, the commotion dies down and everyone eventually goes back to their places.  
  
Louis picks up where he left off, all confidence and brio, even though inside him he doesn’t understand what the fucking hell just happened.  
  
-  
  
  
It spreads around like wildfire. Louis can indeed almost see the headline in the school papers “Acting prodigy Louis Tomlinson almost killed by a prop malfunction: accident or plot?”, subtitle: “Theatre director Simon Cowell attempts to kill student Louis Tomlinson”.  
  
The thing is Louis sincerely believes that as far as Cowell is concerned, nothing is impossible. Because he knows behind that morally responsible gentleman façade lies a deep dark cave filled with things that nightmares are made of. But he’s not worried about Cowell. Not really.  
  
Because by the time his last class for the day is done and he’s strolling his way home under the warm welcome of the afternoon sun, he’s never felt happier to be alive. It’s probably how people who survive near-death experiences feel at the aftermath, a sense of resurrection and another shot at it all.  
  
And he’s smiling so hard he doesn’t even care that he still doesn’t understand how he could have possibly survived. There was no way that he knew to haul himself out of his seat just barely half a second before the thing could land on him; he may be awesome, yes - this is an established fact, but he doesn’t have the reflexes to possibly escape that, nobody does. But he tries not to dwell on a minor detail to a major phenomenon, because he’s just really, really happy to be alive.  
  
Louis has barely made it inside their flat when something half-naked and pineapple-y throws himself onto Louis and nearly knocks him on the floor. “Oh thank God, yer not dead.” Niall says into Louis’ ear in the midst of their half-death-grip, half-embrace.  
Louis struggles to get air back into his lungs with Niall’s grabby limbs octopusing him, “I am now.” He manages to force out his windpipe. For someone so blonde, Niall is freakishly strong.  
  
Niall lets go of him immediately and drags him properly inside their flat. Louis doesn’t bother to take off his coat as he plops himself down the sofa with an exaggerated sigh and stretches his legs out on the coffee table. Niall jumps up next to him, all big blue eyes and spiky blonde hair. “I heard about what happened and I could barely finish lunch.”  
  
“You already had lunch #3 without me?” Louis asks him, turning on the TV, like it was just an ordinary Friday afternoon and he and Niall were just having a lovely chat.  
  
“I had leftover chicken from last night, it was no big deal.” Niall says distractedly. “Louis.”  
  
Louis pauses and narrows his eyes. “You smell good, is that pineapple?” he leans over and sniffs him.  
  
“Louis!” Niall screams.  
  
“Niall!” Louis screams back.  
  
“Near death experience! Hello?!”  
  
“Oh, right, yeah, yeah.” He starts skimming through the channels, stops when he stumbles upon a cooking special. “Wait, how do you know anyway?”  
  
“Liam and Zayn texted! Does it matter how I know?!”  
  
Louis narrows his eyes, somewhat a little betrayed. “Of course Zayn would know. He’s practically a theatre Jedi now. And of course the first person he would tell is Liam.” He pauses. “Hey, did you know those two were fucking?”  
  
Niall punches him in the arm.  
  
“Ow, Horan! That’s not how you’re supposed to treat a friend who almost just died.”  
  
Niall looks at him with an alarmingly blank face, then jumps on him with aggressive limbs, initiating one of their impromptu wrestling matches (slash tickle fights). Louis manages to push and pin Niall down out of impulse but before he could properly rev into action and come up with some kind of defense tactic, Niall’s legs are quick to wrap themselves around Louis’ waist and rolls himself on top of Louis and straddle him into paralysis. It’s a popular opinion that Niall might be part-monkey.  
  
“It’s not fair that this is what I have to go home to every day.” Louis huffs, not even bothering to break loose from the hands pinning his wrists against the sofa. “I must have done something really bad in my past life to deserve this.”  
  
“Nonsense, you love me.”  
  
“Well I must say, darling, I’m a little turned on right now.” Louis lets his mouth spread into a devilish grin and starts to grind his hips in a suggestive motion.  
  
“There’s not enough money in the world, Tommo.” Niall grins back, braced teeth showing. “Now tell me, what the fuck happened today?”  
Louis sighs, the least interested. “You already know half of it: There was a slight prop malfunction that almost killed me but I got away so I didn’t die. The world can relax now.”  
  
Niall rolls his eyes. “Yeah, how did you get away, anyway? Everyone’s calling it a miracle.”  
  
“Are they?” Louis bites his lip, suddenly unsure. “It’s probably just my ninja skills, no miracle of any kind.” But Louis is lying. By omission, that is.  _He_ did not push himself out of that chair,  _he_ didn’t save himself, someone – or something – else did. He’s not just sure what, or if he wants to know.  
  
“Do you think it’s Cowell?” Niall is asking for an answer to a whole another question.  
  
“Nah, if he wanted me dead, he would’ve done it a long time ago.”  
  
It’s a while before Niall lets out the breath that he’s been holding and gives him a look that Louis would take as a sign of relief. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch, you know that?”  
  
“Yeah, remind me to thank my guardian angel with a nice blowjob later.” Louis offers offhandedly.  
  
Niall snorts. “I doubt you have one. I’m not sure if you can even walk into a church without bursting into flames.”  
  
Louis makes an exaggerated shocked gasp. “You bruise my heart.”  
  
“You mean that dark, vacuous space inside your chest?”  
  
“I won’t take this. Get off of me.”  
  
Niall giggles and slides himself off Louis, who sits upright and looks up just in time to see the door open and Zayn and Liam, in their sexy ruffled post-lecture state, hasten inside, spotting Louis alive and well and slightly a bit dishevelled himself, then rush over to the sofa, climbing all over him as if they were lost puppies who just found their mummy.  
  
“We tried to get here as soon as we could.” Liam says, his elbow lodged somewhere along Louis’ ribs.   
  
“Niall, they’ve got me! Tell my mother I love her!”  
  
Niall just smiles and ambles over to the kitchen, probably to make tea. They love drinking tea together. It’s a tradition that will live to tell the tale.  
  
When they have simmered down and Louis can breathe again (and the tea has arrived), Liam starts firing him questions about the near-death fiasco that, to be honest, Louis doesn’t have answers to. At one point, Liam rattles too fast, and he’s already incoherent at normal speed as it is, that Louis interrupts him mid-sentence and says “Zayn, can you please kiss your woman so she’ll shut up for a minute? Jesus.”  
Liam’s next syllable gets stuck in his throat and Zayn accidentally spits the tea that he was sipping three seconds ago. Louis smirks at the cliché of it all.  
  
“Oh yeah,” Louis flashes each of them an accusatory glare. “I know about you two.”  
  
Louis has never seen Liam so red and Zayn so… well, so un-Zayn-like. “How did you find out?” Zayn asks carefully.  
  
“Privileged information.” Louis snaps, defensive. “Did you really think you can hide behind our backs with your little saucy affair and not get chastised for it?”  
  
“There’s no need to be mad. We were going to tell you eventually.” Zayn says gently, like a parent confronting a child who just accidentally discovered he was adopted.  
  
“Oh yeah? When? When I’ll accidently walk in on you bending Liam over your desk and pounding him from the back while he’s screaming ‘Oh, yeah, Zayn, harder, harder, that’s it baby, you’re such a stud’--” Liam makes a little scandalized noise in his throat, “-- and you’ll have no other choice but to explain the real nature of your relationship?”  
  
Liam suddenly can’t speak and Zayn shakes his head, unimpressed, like he knows Louis makes it an art to create a spectacle out of a situation. “You’re such a dick.” He simply says.  
  
“Oh, I’m a dick? But I’m not one running around shagging my bestfriend without telling my other bestfriends about it. I’m not the one committing a federal crime.”  
  
“You can’t honestly be pissed at us about this.” Zayn tells him in an incredulous tone. “And how is this even a federal crime?” He adds absently, as if three years of living with Louis hasn’t gotten him accustomed to the fact that 90% of what Louis says makes no sense.  
  
“It’s got to be! And if it’s not, then there should be a law that says it’s illegal to shag your bestfriend while your other bestfriends are clueless of said shagging.”  
  
Liam sighs from his end, long and winded, signalling defeat. “Louis, we really did want to tell you. It’s just – it was – too early and we weren’t really sure if --” He trails off and Louis catches the hopeless look that Liam and Zayn share then and suddenly the realization punches him straight in the gut.  
  
The first few months that Louis knew Liam and Zayn, which was almost 3 years ago, when Liam had just moved in to their flat, impossibly kind-hearted and puppy-faced with a strong Wolverhampton accent to match, and Zayn had just started uni with Louis, quiet and mysterious, but when determined becomes physically incapable of self-restraint (much to Louis’ delight), they had both seemed the opposite of worlds. Liam was a sweet, wide-eyed boy with so much love to share with the world, and Zayn was a contained, narrow-eyed man who didn’t think the world was worthy. Truth be told, Louis made a bet with Niall, who he’d known for just as long as Liam but had hit off with quiet spectacularly well because Niall was simply the easiest man in the world, on how long till Liam’s honey-sweet righteousness and Zayn’s utter lack of it would clash and one of them would move out. He’d bet 2 months, but Niall just had half-smiled, hands in pockets, and said “Nah, let’s see.”   
  
Two months had passed, and a lot had happened. Liam’s accent finally thinned out, Louis met Simon Cowell, Niall made it to the football team, and suddenly Liam and Zayn were inseparable, always finding time and ways to see each other during their free periods. Louis would sometimes catch them at the school ground lying on the grass while Zayn wrote something on one of his many special notebooks, probably a poem (because Louis knows Zayn’s Neruda Face when he sees it) and Liam casually peered in over Zayn’s shoulders. Louis had expected Zayn to clock Liam in the head by impulse, because he also knows how much Zayn could get diva-protective over that, especially those beautiful poems he’d written about home that Louis never would’ve discovered had he not snooped around Zayn’s stuff while looking for spare condoms, but there Zayn was, vulnerable and open for Liam to see, and he was completely okay with it.  
  
From then it’s always been LiamandZayn and LouisandNiall. Louis deduced it to the fact that he and Niall share a love for football that none of the other guys could understand, and Liam and Zayn have always been into arts and music (but, okay, he and Niall were  _also_ into arts and music but they didn’t finish each other’s sentences or insist to sit together when there was a perfectly vacant couch in front of them, is what Louis is saying).  
  
He should have known sooner.  
  
“You’re…” Louis doesn’t want to say it. It feels too heavy in his tongue. He looks at Zayn and Liam again and that hopeless look they’re still sharing and wonders how he could’ve missed it. “You’re in love.”  
  
Zayn and Liam don’t say anything, but it’s Zayn who makes the tiniest nod, cheeks turning pink.  
  
“Wow.” Niall says, seated next to Louis so close that he can feel Niall’s knee jiggling a bit. “Where have you been for three years, Lou?”  
  
Louis wants to bite Niall, but he just ends up saying “I don’t know.” Then the realization catches up with him. “Wait, you knew about this?” He has now redirected his resentment to Niall.  
  
“Yeah, mate, we can’t all be idiots like you.” Niall says with a shrug in one shoulder.  
  
“Well, in that case,” Louis shifts his attention to Zayn and Liam, trying his best serious face, “The sex must be mind-blowing then.”  
  
Liam finally gives out and unleashes a laugh that’s halfway between relieved and absolutely traumatized, falling easily on top of Zayn and Zayn gives in to another one of his famous head-shakes. “Terrible, Tommo. You’re absolutely terrible.” Zayn says, and Louis thinks it’s as good as any apology. “But you’re right – the sex  _is_ fantastic.” He adds brazenly.   
  
Louis cannonballs on the couch, making sure to hit Zayn’s crotch with his knee, and if his heart is on the verge of erupting with happiness for his two bestfriends, he doesn’t say it.  
-  
  
  
  
  
That night, Louis is left alone at the flat. Niall is getting pissed with some old friends who are in town for the week, Liam has debate practice, and Zayn is, well, off somewhere being mysterious (having dinner with his sisters and getting drilled on about his shagging ways with Liam.)

He spends most of his evening on the phone with his mum, because of course, Liam told her what happened and  _of course_ , she would go batshit-crazy and yap on Louis’ ear for hours about the same thing over and over, “take care of yourself”, “eat vegetables”, “have plenty of sleep”, “always listen to Liam”, “don’t have drinking contests with Niall, he’s  _Irish_ ”…  
  
Louis still believes he has the best mum in the world, though.  
  
“Just promise me that you won’t kill yourself. I don’t want to lose my favourite son.”  
  
“I’m your only son.”  
  
“And a total pain in the arse at that.” She pauses. “Speaking of arses, are you seeing anyone?”  
  
“Mum.”  
  
“Are you using protection?”  
  
“Mum!”  
  
“I’m just saying, Louis, it can’t hurt to be safe. God knows where you stick your hoo-ha in.”  
  
“Okay, I’m hanging up and calling child services.”  
  
“I love you, son.”  
  
Louis can hear some slight shifting on the other end of the line and waits.  
  
“Paging Boobear!”  
  
Louis rolls his eyes because he recognizes that voice all too well. His mum must have handed the phone to one of his sisters because her soup was burning, or something. Louis can play the scene in his head.  
  
They’re all gathered in the dining room while her mum makes dinner and the twins sneak a taste and Fizzy and Lottie get reprimanded for talking too loudly about something funny that happened in school. It isn’t much, but to Louis, it’s home, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world.  
  
“Call me that one more time, and I’ll tell Mum about the bleacher incident. And pray to God I’ll spare her the sordid details, Fizzy.”  
  
“You wouldn’t dare, Boobear.”  
  
“Bravo, it rhymes. You’re officially a genius.” Louis recites in a dead tone.  
  
“I see the lack of sex of is making you even crankier than usual.”  
  
“ _As if_  you have any idea about my sexlife.” Louis scoffs. “Doesn’t even come close to how much I know about yours, bleacher slut.”  
  
“Why, I’ve missed you too, respectable big brother.”  
  
Louis laughs and realizes how much he misses home. “Talk to me, kiddo.”  
  
Fizzy is suddenly quiet and wistful. “When Mum told us what happened today, it got me thinking life is too fragile. You could lose the people you love at any minute. So please, try not to die. It would suck on so many levels.”  
  
Louis suppresses a smile, and waits for it.  
  
“But if you ever do, I have dibs on your room. Lottie’s got her eyes on the Super Mario Kart.”  
  
Ah, there it is. “Well, it’s always nice to know I’m loved by my sisters.”  
  
He spends another half hour talking to Phoebe and Daisy to check up on them, make sure they’re breaking rules and doing it right, and gets a quick hello from Lottie, who sounds lovesick from the guy she’s recently met at a friend’s party. Unlike Fizzy (who, by first-hand experience, Louis knows lost her virginity under a bleacher after a football match), Lottie is more reserved and easily jolted. When he asks about the mystery guy (not really mystery since Louis knows even the guy’s grandmother’s cat’s name through his Facebook account), she rattles out an incoherent excuse and flees. He only knows about the guy through Fizzy, who gives him a weekly update on who’s snogging who.  
  
People can say anything about Louis, but nobody can deny that he’s a good brother, because he really is, and not even by choice. When his parents signed the divorce papers, Louis felt like he signed his own contract – to be a good big brother, someone who’ll be there for every broken knee and every broken heart, someone who’ll fill the void somehow, no excuses. That’s kinda what happens when you have a complete twat of a father who leaves you and your sisters too young.  
  
They hang up on each other at around 8, just in time for Louis to start on his essay on history of theatre due, well, yesterday (but everyone in the theatre department knows how Louis has a way with begging for extensions), but to procrastination be the glory, he shuts off his laptop instead and walks over to their balcony, thinking it’d be nice to get some breather and stretch out, maybe have a fag or two just to clear his mind, thank God for the life he’s been given, or something stupid like that. He steps out into the moonlight, rests his hands on the railing, cold air stinging his skin, when suddenly.  
  
-

There’s no grand revelation: Louis walks out into their balcony, makes the mistake of looking down and there, lying naked on the cold tiles of their flat, he finds a boy. It isn’t really that hard to notice when their balcony is so small it can barely fit five people at once.

Louis doesn’t freak out, is the surprising thing. Not even when the boy becomes aware of Louis’ presence and makes the slightest movement  
from being curled up on the floor.  
  
Louis figures he should run inside and get the fire extinguisher, a weapon of some sort, but what he does, because he’s Louis Tomlinson, is stand still and tilt his head to take in the sight before him: the boy is quite  _big_ , not big enough to beat Liam in a wrestling match, Louis imagines, (then again, who is?), but big enough to effortlessly put Louis in a headlock. But his face looks young, curls swept everywhere. Freshman, probably.  
  
“How the fuck did you get up here?”  
  
The boy looks up at Louis, and Louis momentarily skids into a heady double-take. The son of a bitch is a girl. He must be with those big blinking eyes and that pretty little mouth, not to mention the ridiculous nest of curls resting on top of his head and around his face. Then Louis’ eyes travel downsouth, and nope, not a girl. He doesn’t look any less harmless, however.  
  
“Answer me, or I’ll go back inside and pick up the phone, and best pray it’s the police on the other line and not my burly flatmate Liam.”  
  
The stranger remains motionless and unreceptive. He just bats his comically large green eyes at Louis.   
  
“Got your tongue cut out or something?”  
  
Still, nothing.  
  
Louis sighs, feeling too sober for this. “Look, I don’t know what kind of sick twisted game you’re playing but you look like a nice kid so I’ll make easy. There must be a reason that you ended up on my balcony in your all naked glory. Now, I could either call the university security and charge you for breaking and entering, or I could let you off. If I were you, I’d take the second offer and start explaining.”  
  
The lady-boy says nothing.  
  
“Are you involved in some kind of dare?”  
  
No response.  
  
Louis moves on. “Is this one of those stupid frat pranks that they pull in the middle of the term? Or a part of some weird initiation process?”  
Louis asks, then remembers something. “Wait, did Upsilon Pi send you here? Because those guys hate me after my mates and I ‘accidentally’  
torched their house last year. Served those pompous arseholes right, if you ask me.”  
  
For a fleeting moment, Louis sees a flicker of fondness in the boy’s face.   
  
After a short silence, Louis can hear the boy clear his throat, as though testing out his vocal chords. He doesn’t expect it when the boy looks  
up and wears this earnest expression on his face that splashes over Louis like ice cold water. “Hello, Louis.” The boy finally says, all whispery  
and heartfelt, as though he’s been waiting a long time to do that, smiling at him with teeth and lips, and there’s so much sparkle and pretty in  
one face it’s almost unearthly, and yes, Louis is both terrified and in love.  
  
He backs away slightly, in a state of varying degrees of surprise. “Who are you? (And why are you so beautiful?)” He doesn’t actually say that  
last one.  
  
The nameless boy looks sad for a second then very anti-climatically says, “I’m your guardian angel.”  
  
Apparently, that answers both questions.  
  
-  
  
  
  
“Didn’t know you pulled last night.”  
  
Louis squints into the early morning light and sees Zayn appearing into his line of vision. It’s quite a nice view. “Huh?”  
  
“The hottie between your sheets, dumdum.” Zayn jerks his head in the direction of Louis’ room and Louis all but sighs, and not because Zayn  
looks particularly like sex on legs when he’s just rolled out of bed prancing into the kitchen wearing only a pair of loose grey sweatpants  
hanging low on his hips with the strings undone. It’s just that Louis is not awake enough for the conversation they’re about to have.  
  
“Wait, you saw him?”  
  
“How can I not when your room is literally right across mine?” Zayn surveys him like he’s biggest idiot in the world, and the sad part is Louis  
may agree with him. He has a freaking stranger sleeping in his bed, after all. “You left your door open so, I might have snuck a peek or two.”  
  
“Creep.” Louis comments idly, pulling himself up to sit on the island while Zayn pours himself a cup of coffee. “What are doing up so early?”  
  
“What are you? You’re supposed to still be in bed by now from all the sex I assume you were having last night.” Zayn says, careful not to spill  
a drop of the terrible coffee that Louis was forced to make because he was the first one up. He couldn’t get any proper sleep what with the  
stranger-in-his-bed thing. “I’m surprised I didn’t hear anything though, given how loud you can get.”  
  
Louis is too engrossed on the froth forming in his coffee to snarl at that.   
  
Zayn leans against the counter in front of Louis and holds the mug between both of his hands, keeping it warm. “He looks a bit young, though.  
Freshman?”  
  
Louis narrows his eyes accusatorily. “For how long were you standing outside my door exactly?”  
  
“Long enough to make sure you’re not facing statutory rape charges.”  
  
“Relax, he’s perfectly legal.” Louis says, although he doesn’t really know that. He decides lying is the best course of action, for the time being.  
  
“Good, he’s got a nice arse.”  
  
Louis narrows his eyes at Zayn, silently comforted by how naturally this conversation might take a different direction. “May I remind you you’re  
in a committed relationship with my bestfriend?”  
  
“Niall’s your bestfriend.”  
  
  
“I can have two bestfriends.”  
  
“Says the big-headed narcissist.”  
  
Louis shrugs. “Ain’t my fault bitches love the Tommo.”  
  
“Speaking of bitches, there’s something you’re not telling me about this one.” Something dawns on Zayn’s face. “Oh my God Louis, did you  
kidnap him? Because you know Niall and I were drunk that night.”  
  
“No, Zayn, I didn’t kidnap  _anyone_.” Louis says uninterestedly, because yes, Louis remembers how ‘that night’ went, Zayn and Niall getting  
irreparably inebriated and slurring out a dare that involved kidnapping a random person and bringing him home for tea. It seemed like a good  
idea that time, so when Niall puked all over Louis’ favourite pair of TOMS eight tequila shots later, he was only slightly disconcerted.  
  
“Did you have sex with him without his knowledge?” Zayn asks, experimentally.  
  
Louis gives in and rolls his eyes. “No.”  
  
“Then what are you all being hush-hush for? Usually you’re so excited about your sexual conquests you tell us what positions you did it in  
even without our consent. What gives?”  
  
Louis dreaded this moment, where he has to explain that a boy mysteriously appeared in their balcony last night and claimed he was Louis’ guardian angel and worse, Louis might actuallykindasorta believe him. “You know what I think? I think that you and Liam have had way too much sex that his nosiness has rubbed off on you.”  
  
Initially, Louis thought that there was no question - it was utterly ridiculous – and considered seeing a therapist for actually having a debate  
with himself about it. But the boy was in front of him, naked, lost, introducing himself as something Louis considered as real as a Jewish Black  
Santa, and there was a kind of unexplained earnestness in the boy and a fucked-up-ness in the situation that felt so raw to him, so when the  
boy passed out on Louis’ carpet before Louis could properly talk to him, he pulled up the sleeping stranger and dragged his unconscious  
body into his room without thinking about it.  
  
He refused to believe any of it at first, and he probably still does, but as he tossed and turned beside the sleeping boy, who looked like he  
could be anyone’s little brother, Louis can’t help being brought back to that moment when something hurled him off his chair just in time to  
save him from what could’ve been a horrific death like a slo-mo cinematic flashback sequence. And unexpectedly, he makes the connection, and it makes sense.  
  
  
But how does he tell Zayn that without Zayn suspecting he might be on drugs?  
  
So he doesn’t.  
  
  
“At last, you’re awake!” Louis cries out when Liam pads into the kitchen, looking and smelling like a ray of sunshine: just the diversion he  
needs. “Your boyfriend here has a crush on my friend.”  
  
Zayn shakes his head, but he can’t really stay annoyed when there’s a freshly-showered Liam Payne intimately pressing his face against his, it wasn’t exactly a kiss, more like a nuzzle-sniff, smelling oddly like cinnamon and coconut. Louis is only slightly jealous, rolling away when  
  
Liam reaches out to ruffle his hair.  
  
Louis decides to give them a freepass for being extra-sweet and coupley today; he’s just heard that Zayn is taking Liam to Bradford for the  
weekend, which would be their first time visiting Zayn’s family home together as a proper couple, a perfect opportunity for them to unwind after  
a busy week and “have crazy amount of sex in my childhood bed”, Zayn added carelessly when he thought Liam was out of earshot. Liam was in fact within earshot and if Louis and Niall didn’t laugh at Liam’s purpling face, it was only because of Zayn shooting daggers at them.  
  
“Can’t blame him very much, your friend’s cute.” Liam announces casually, stopping to stand next to Zayn against the counter to peruse the contents of their cupboard. He always ends up making breakfast even if occasionally others get up before him. It’s just life. “We’re talking about the bloke in Louis’ room, right?”  
  
“Has anyone here ever heard of a certain thing called privacy?” Louis demands absently.  
  
“Have you ever heard of a certain thing called locking your door?” Liam answers, just as absently.  
  
“Reckon we should ask Louis’ friend if he might be interested in a three-way, what with your birthday coming up and all.” Zayn is talking to  
Liam but he winks at Louis, getting a rise out of him. “Might be a nice present for you.”  
  
“You’re the best.” Liam says sweetly, pausing long enough to collect a honeyed I’m-so-happy-we’re-shagging kiss from Zayn before walking over to the fridge.  
  
  
Louis knows they’re taking the piss – Liam doesn’t have the social adequacy to engage in a three-way, but it’s still a bit disturbing. “What  
happened to my sweet, blushing Liam?” He whines, “Zayn, I think you fucked the naughty into your girlfriend.”   
  
Liam does blush then, but one corner of Zayn’s mouth hitches up. “Oh, Louis. If you really think Liam is the girl, you are terribly mistaken.”  
  
Louis’ mouth opens with interest, eyebrows rising. “Oh? I honestly didn’t peg you for the cock-riding type, Malik.”  
  
When Liam almost drops the eggs he is now pulling out from the fridge, Louis grins happily over his coffee. “There’s my Liam.”  
  
They have their Saturday Special, Louis’ personal favourite, because it’s all greasy food: intentionally semi-burned bacons (spicy deep-fried  
chicken wings for Zayn), not-so-intentionally semi-burned omelette and oily fried rice. It’s only a once-in-a-week occasion, though, because  
  
Liam is an annoying “good” friend who mother-hens them into eating healthy, and for some reason they let him call the shots. It’s more than just the puppy dog eyes and the commendable cuddling skills (really it is), but that’s how it’s always been in their flat: Liam is the mother, Zayn  
is the father (a whipped one at that), and Louis and Niall are the two loud children who do nothing useful in the kitchen except initiate food  
fights.  
  
Louis is relieved that the hot-friend-in-Louis’-room isn’t brought up again during breakfast. Niall gets up to the smell of bacons and joins them halfway through, and even though Louis knows Niall saw the boy in his room, Niall makes no mention of it, because why would Niall be using  
his mouth for talking when there’s a plate of greasy bacons in front of him that needs eating? Logic.  
  
-  
  
  
  
The boy is already awake when Louis enters his room and his heart sinks. The boy looks a bit misplaced, lost, slightly the opposite of what he looked like when he said Louis’ name last night, and it’s not a look that Louis is used to seeing on the person tangled in his sheets on a Saturday morning.  
  
“Good morning?” Louis asks tentatively, testing the waters, in case the boy shoots up from the bed and rams him with something. Looking at the state the boy is in, Louis considers it unlikely. “Please tell me I made the right decision letting you stay the night.”  
  
When the boy says nothing, Louis approaches the bed and thinks of sitting on it. He chooses to stand by the edge of it instead, facing the boy with some feigned authoritative stance. “You’re not some psycho killer, are you? I figured if you were, you would’ve skinned me in my sleep last night and I would be in a body bag in someone’s basement by now, so I doubt it.”  
  
He’s simply met with big romantic eyes blinking up at him. Louis has been trying, but it’s difficult to read the boy’s face, close to impossible.  
  
“You’re not a very big talker, are you?” Louis folds his arms over his chest. Then he says, very quietly, “Please tell me you’re a lunatic and that you’re not actually my guardian angel because it is not making any sense and but it’s making perfect sense and I’m absolutely going crazy. So tell me.”  
  
The boy finally shows a sign of response, his expression changing to something that of… fondness? Affection? Louis isn’t sure. “ _Was.”_  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“ _Was_  your guardian angel.”  
  
Louis scoff-laughs, a bit floored. “So, you’re gonna go with that then? Because guardian angels exist, apparently, like flying reindeers and talking wooden puppets, and they randomly turn up in people’s balconies all beautiful and naked and I’m just supposed to accept the fact that my guardian angel is sitting in front of me on the bed where I sleep every night.” He wants to sound mocking and incredulous, really he does, but he ends up sounding a little desperate.  
  
“Louis, I didn’t turn up in your balcony randomly. I’m here because I don’t know where else to go.” The boy says, as if that information helps, as if anything that’s coming out of his mouth helps.  
  
Louis can’t help but notice the glaring disjunct between his pretty face and his bassy voice. He takes a calming breath, his hands migrating to his hips. “Okay, okay.” He wipes at the bed of sweat forming in his forehead. “Do you have a name?”  
  
“Harry.”  
  
“Okay, Harry. Um, first of all, that name is um, not very angel-like? – angelic? – and second of all, can you cover yourself up because it’s proven to be a bit distracting.”  
  
Harry surprises Louis with a small grin as he pulls the quilt halfway up his torso. “Better?”  
  
Louis does a double-take, says nothing for a good few seconds while he squints at Harry looking innocently back at him, and then snaps out of it. “Okay, um. So if you’re my guardian angel, why don’t you have any wings?” He asks, stupidly.  
Harry looks like he’s about to roll his eyes but checks himself in time. “I told you already. I’m not your guardian angel anymore. I’m a mortal now.”  
  
“Uh-huh.” Louis takes another long pause. “And I’m supposed to just know what that means?”  
  
Harry sighs. “I’m a bit disappointed in you, Louis.”  
  
“Excuse you?” Louis leans away a little, thinking that would make him see this madness in a clearer perspective. It’s still weird how naturally the boy pronounces his name as if he’s been doing it for a long time.   
  
“I thought you’d have an idea somehow, but it looks like I’m going to have to explain everything to you. Great.”  
  
Louis is the speechless moron now.  
  
“The thing is, you believe me, you might be fighting it, but you believe me, otherwise I’d be out of here by now.” Harry says, suddenly so  
conversational and casual that he hardly resembles the boy lying motionless on Louis’ bed 30 minutes ago. “And I want to thank you for that.”  
  
Louis blinks, overcome. “Erm…”  
  
“And I think I owe you the truth, seeing as I’m probably going to be staying with you from here on out.”  
  
Louis’ eyes leave their sockets. “What?”  
  
Harry taps the space next to him and Louis considers him as if he’s grown a third arm, hesitates, shrugs, leans forward, then back again.  
  
“Do you want to know the truth or not?” Harry folds his arms across his chest, demanding, and Louis stares open-mouthed. “Sit.”  
  
“How do I know you don’t have a knife hidden somewhere in there?”  
  
Harry rolls his eyes, unable to restrain himself this time. “You don’t, because I am, in fact, a serial killer and you’re about to die.” he states blandly, eyelids drooped halfway as though he’s bored. Louis is a bit impressed.  
  
“See? It’s stuff like that that bothers me! Why do you talk like that? Angels are not supposed to talk like that! How do you even know the concept of sarcasm and be excellent at it?” Louis pauses to take a breath, “And God, for the last time, where are your wings?”  
  
Harry’s offhand expression remains unperturbed. “Louis, sit down.”  
  
“Before I do that, I need some proof, somehow, that you really are--” Louis starts miming aimlessly with his hands, “you know.”  
  
“Okay.” Harry concedes, calmly, “What kind of proof do you need?”  
  
“Well, if you’re my guardian angel, then you must know a lot of things about me. Maybe even some things I haven’t told anyone else.”  
  
“I know enough.” Harry says and for some reason, it succeeds in stirring some kind of intrigue in Louis. “Like you grew up in a little house in Doncaster with your mum and four little sisters and that you have watched Wicked on DVD forty-seven times.” He pauses, considering something. “And you secretly believe in horoscopes,” After a moment he adds, “which is dumb, to be honest.”  
  
“Those are just facts about me.” Louis claims. “How did I lose my virginity? The real story, not the one I tell my friends so they don’t think I experienced a momentary mental paralysis in my pubescent years.”  
  
Harry grins shamelessly at that. “You were 15. It was with your older cousin Lisa.”  
  
Louis's tongue freezes in his throat at that, because the only way Harry can have possibly known that is if a.) he’s a mind-reader or b.) Louis is hallucinating (b is the more likely choice), but he decides to continue his line of questioning, putting on a blasé stance. “Who’s Mrs Jenkins?”  
  
“She was the stray cat you met backstage when you were rehearsing your monologue for the first time you were auditioning for a school production, and one day she just disappeared without any trace and you think about her every time you’re about to do an audition.”  
  
Louis’ breath hitches; he’s a bit fascinated and frankly a bit  _terrified,_ because it crashes over him like a tsunami. That all of this could be real. That he may actually be standing six feet away from an actual angel;  _his_ actual guardian angel.  
  
“Are you just going to stand there? Or should I give you more ‘proof’?” Harry surprises him for the hundredth time when he makes air-quotes.

Louis shakes his head, wondering what in the world has happened to his normal, suburban college life, and crawls over to where Harry’s hand rests. He adjusts himself so that they both lean against the headboard, side by side, unmoving. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just stares at his tiny, tanned feet next to Harry’s big, ashen ones. A long, shaky breath puffs out of him before he could stop it.  
  
“Horoscopes are sometimes accurate, you know.” Louis starts, then “what are you doing here then? Did you fall from heaven, or what?” He  
halts into a pause. “See, that’s funny because that wasn’t even a pick-up line.”  
  
Harry mutely blinks at him. “Louis, I did something I shouldn’t have. And now I’m paying for the consequences.”  
  
Louis furrows his eyebrows and another moment of silence drifts by before he turns to look at Harry so he gets a clue as to what he’s dealing with here.  Harry looks – well – he looks absolutely sad – torn, even. And as much as Louis wants to look away, it’s also the most devastatingly beautiful thing he’s ever seen.  
  
“What did you do?” Louis asks.  
  
Harry doesn’t reply, but Louis knows it’s only because he’s thinking, hard.  
  
“It’s okay, you can tell me.”  
  
Harry gazes at Louis for a long moment, his eyes a subtle shade of green, and it’s all Louis can do not to shrink into the sheets. “Contrary to common belief, there’s a law that says we can’t save our human merely at our will. There has to be an order from the higher power. You’re still alive because I broke that rule.”  
  
It takes Louis a long while to let the words register, and then everything clicks. “So yesterday when I – that was you?”

Harry gives him a hesitant nod.  
  
“So what does that mean? That there was no official memorandum that I should have been saved? That I should have…” Louis clears a knot in his throat, “Died?”  
  
“Well, you didn’t.” Harry says quickly. “So.”  
  
And without really anticipating for it, Louis comes into a frightening realization. “I owe you my life?”  
  
“A little bit.” Harry says in a humorous tone, and to Louis’ surprise, Harry gently takes his hand. “No, you don’t.” He says, more seriously. “It’s my job, anyway, to protect you. Being your guardian angel and all.”  
  
Louis knows Harry is trying to downplay it all, make Louis feel less terrible about it somehow, and it does steady his breathing a little, so as a thank-you, he squeezes Harry’s hand more securely into his own. “This is so fucked up.” He says in barely above a whisper.  
  
“Could be worse. You could be dead, I could be nowhere.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Our existence is only as good as of the humans that we protect.” Harry explains. “If you die, I die.” Louis raises an eyebrow and Harry clarifies. “Well, technically, I get to live, but I wouldn’t really know how to do so without you.”  
  
Louis’ heart skips at that. There’s something so innocent and unbridled about the way Harry says it that it becomes the saddest, most meaningful thing everyone’s ever said to him.  
  
“So when our humans die, most of us become lost spirits. It’s part of the whole human-guardian angel bond.” Harry announces casually, like that isn’t wrecking Louis’ brain a little bit.  
  
“ _Human-guardian angel bond_.” Louis repeats almost inaudibly, shaking his head. “So you broke a rule and what, is this like your punishment? You lose your powers and turn into…” He motions in Harry’s direction, “this? Human?”  
  
“Yep.” Harry ducks his head down, and Louis initially thinks it’s because he’s ashamed of his new, powerless form, but as the sunlight breaks through his window and clings onto Harry’s skin like paper on glue, he realizes that it’s because Harry doesn’t want Louis to watch him suffer. And that’s even worse somehow.  
  
“Well, could be worse.” Louis embarks on an attempt at cheering Harry up, because he figures it’s only imperative that he should feel empathy for the person who made a sacrifice to save his life, given the twenty per cent probability that Harry is merely a figment of his imagination and that he has absolutely gone mental. “And to be fair, when humans get punished, they don’t turn into angels.”  
  
“How is that fair?” Harry asks objectively, angling his head to the side so he’s arching a curious brow at Louis.  
  
“I don’t know.” Louis says aimlessly, ducking his head down so Harry can’t see him grimace. “What I do know is I am shite at comforting people.”  
  
“Could be worse.” Harry echoes, “You could be throwing me out right now.”  
  
The room is suddenly quiet again.  
  
“Say all of this is true," Louis keeps his head down. “Why did you save me if you knew it would get you in trouble?” Then he looks up, meeting Harry's sad eyes.  
  
“Because like you, I’m prone to breaking rules.” There’s a glimmer of sadness that creeps in and out of Harry’s face and Louis catches it every time. Louis has a feeling that there’s much more to be said, but he leaves it.  
  
“Okay.” Louis nods. “One more question: why do I believe all of this?” And he really does. He’s wishing that Harry is just a part of some prank his flatmates are pulling on him and by day’s end they will be having a laugh while Louis will be sulking and throwing things at them, but he also feels that he will never be able to recover from the emotional injury if he finds out that none of this is real, if Harry The Guardian Angel isn’t real. “Tell me, why am I convinced of this insanity?” He tries again.  
  
“Because you’re Louis. Because you’re stubborn. And you believe in things, regardless of how insane they are.” Harry turns his head just when Louis decides to turn his and with that, they catch each other’s eyes this time. Harry shakes his head, but it comes out endearing, as if to say ‘because you’re an idiot’, then unexpectedly his mouth stretches into a close-mouthed smile, and Louis mentally rolls his eyes because the son of a bitch has dimples, of course he does. Why hasn’t Louis noticed them before? Then he has a belated realization that their hands are still clasped together; the weirder part is he’s perfectly okay with it. “And because you trust me.” Like that explains it all.

Then there’s suddenly warm, puffy feeling in Louis’ chest. He ignores it; it’s probably just the dimples. “It’s probably just the dimples.” He says out loud; Harry’s smile only gets wider, if that’s possible. “One last question.”  
  
Harry patiently waits.  
  
Louis takes a deep breath. “Do angels… get laid a lot?”


End file.
